This story doesn’t really resemble the first draft that I started months & months ago.

Back then, the idea was, ‘what situation would Janeway not cope with?’. It was going to be funny. An exploration of how a capable, in charge, intelligent Starship captain totally disintegrates looking after a baby (then two babies).

But, there’s something fundamentally not funny about orphans. I discovered that I was starting to feel sorry for these little tykes, left to be looked after by Captain Janeway. Then I got depressed because I had to polish off her sister and mother. No, this was not a happy story.

I struggled with the ‘poor little orphans’ for some time. I didn’t want to abandon them, but then again, it was hard to laugh when I’d just killed off their parents.

The result is this story. I can’t say that I’m particularly happy with it. Especially the ending.

Edited to add: Oh, and the ghastly Mrs Rabid was the idea of one of the people on the NaNoWriMo forum (this story wasn’t my “novel” – I’m still working on that). Originally she was a “drive-by mommy”, i.e. the type of person who tells you everything you’re doing wrong and then she morphed into “lacto-nazi”, i.e. the person who thinks it’s child abuse to bottle feed a baby. I liked ‘Lacto-Nazi’ but I wanted her to be even worse, and Mrs Rabid was the result.